Streetlights, power returned to burned Mark West Estates outside Santa Rosa

When the sun went down Saturday evening, streetlights in the Mark West Estates neighborhood north of Santa Rosa turned on for the first time since the Tubbs fire incinerated hundreds of homes here almost three months ago.

The temporary lighting lifted the shadows off Pacific Heights Drive and provided a beacon for Bill and Nicki McKeever as they walked their wire fox terrier, Murphy.

“There they go!” said Bill McKeever, whose Sussex Drive home in the adjacent subdivision survived the blaze.

“That is fabulous!” said Nicki McKeever as an overhead bulb flickered to life. “It’s just awesome!”

The lights are part of PG&E’s ongoing effort to restore lighting and power to fire-ravaged areas to help facilitate their reconstruction, PG&E spokeswoman Deanna Contreras said. A little over a week ago, PG&E turned on overhead power lines and street lamps in the Coffey Park neighborhood.

On Saturday morning, PG&E crews tested the LED streetlights on the new power poles. Crews went from light to light covering the photo cells on top of the light fixtures to see if the 33-watt LED fixtures turned on. Contreras said the fixtures and photo cells are expected to last 20 years. But they won’t be up that long, she said.

“These are temporary overhead power lines because most of the area had underground utilities,” she said.

On Jean Marie Drive, just south of Pacific Heights Drive, PG&E crews tested the last LED fixture. Some 58 wooden poles, ?47 transformers and 35 LED fixtures had to be installed to bring power to the devastated neighborhood.

The wooden poles now carry 15,288 feet of electrical cable above the street, a slightly unusual sight for local residents accustomed to seeing only the metal streetlight poles. The new equipment will be taken down when it is time to once again install underground utilities.

That won’t happen until local residents and government officials have a better idea of what the neighborhood is going to look like, said Contreras.

“That’s going to require a lot of coordination with the city and landowners and the county,” she said.

The new lighting in Mark West Estates is a welcome development for local cartoonist Brian Fies.

Fies said Saturday he and most of his immediate neighbors plan to rebuild their homes.

“Everybody on my court, all 10 of us, say we want to rebuild,” he said. “We love our neighborhood and we want to stay, we plan to stay.”

Fies and his wife, Sonoma County Social Services Director Karen Fies, are currently in a rental home in Guerneville. He said it’s taken them a couple of months to “get some traction” on their plans to rebuild.

“At this point, we’re talking to an architect, a builder, trying to decide the best way to go forward,” he said. They have no set time frame for when construction of their home will actually take place.

PG&E officials said power poles and LED fixtures have been installed in the nearby Larkfield Estates neighborhood, where streetlights are expected to turn on around Jan. 10.

Like other decimated neighborhoods, Mark West Estates has been cloaked in darkness after sundown, with the only lights visible after a certain hour coming from a distant gas station and shops on Old Redwood Highway.

“It’s black out here,” said Nicki McKeever, who has been walking a loop through the neighborhood for years. “It’s like you’re out in the middle of nowhere.”

But the streetlights change all that while providing an important step toward recovery. Many of her friends in the neighborhood say they will rebuild.

“I’m excited,” said Nicki McKeever, an administrative assistant at a rock quarry. “It’s a sign we’re going forward.”